The Dark Tower: Rank 'Em!

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

I was talking with my girlfriend about the Dark Tower books today. She's almost done book 3 (The Waste Lands), and I, having read the series, told her that book 4 (Wizard and Glass) was my least favourite in the bunch.

This prompted her to ask me to rank the Dark Tower books from best to worst. So I did, and now I'll share my judgment with my fellow Stephen King nerds:

1. The Dark Tower (#7)
2. The Waste Lands (#3)
3. Wolves of the Calla (#5)
4. The Drawing of the Three (#2)
5. Song of Susannah (#6)
6. The Gunslinger (#1)
7. Wizard and Glass (#4)

So what do you who have read the series think? Would you rank them completely differently?

TELL ME!!!

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

To elaborate on my ranking...

You can pretty much divide the list into brackets. First are the top 3, which I loved equally. I only place The Dark Tower first because it is the ending (and what an ending!) and the Waste Lands second because of Blaine the Mono (and what a Blaine the!...okay, I'll stop).

The next bracket is 4 and 5, which I thought were pretty friggin good. Like most people I really got into the series with the Drawing of the Three, so props there.

The last bracket is the bottom two picks, the odd, quirky books in the series. I like Wizard and Glass the least because it's such a departure from the main storyline. And because prequels suck.

Obviously, I've put a lot of thought into this.

[Al]

My list:
1. The Drawing of the Three (#2)
2. The Waste Lands (#3)
3. Wolves of the Calla (#5)
4. Wizard and Glass (#4)
5. The Dark Tower (#7)
6. The Gunslinger (#1)
7. Song of Susannah (#6)

My Thoughts:

I've been rereading Drawing of the Three and it absolutely pulls me along like no other book in the series, even though I've probably read it a half-dozen times. Eddie and Detta/Odetta are powerfully written and I like seeing Roland in serious, deadly peril (something that never really happens again). The whole thing just moves and doesn't let up.

I love The Waste Lands because it gets into the weirdness of Midworld and the training of Eddie, Susannah, and Jake. It's also the only time in the series that Roland puts aside his quest for the Tower to help someone he could have easily left behind.

Wolves is just a great, high-octane, old-fashioned Western, which was the perfect way to fall back in love with the characters after a 6-year hiatus. It's also the only time we get to see the ka-tet undertake a real Gunslinger adventure, the way I like to imagine the knights of Gilead used to before the world moved on.

I find it interesting that you dislike Wizard and Glass so much, because I feel like I'm doing it a disservice by only placing it fourth. It's a very intimate story and I think it explains Roland far better than anything else in the series. Also, Cuthbert and Alain are great characters (who remain great in Robin Furth's Dark Tower comic book, fyi).

Dark Tower VII has a lot of things that I treasure (including the ending), but I have a hard time getting past Dandelo and Patrick, who seemed too arbitrary and convenient to be such huge parts of the climax. I won't get all dramatic and say they Ruined The Book for me but it did seem to ratchet the intensity down a notch make me more confused than intrigued. Maybe I'll change my mind when I finally sit down to read Insomnia.

I don't harbor any specific hatred for The Gunslinger and Song of Susannah. I reread Gunslinger before Dot3 and, while I definitely rediscovered my love for it, the book just doesn't measure up to everything else in the series. Song of Susannah feels like the book King had to write in order to get to the book he wanted to write. It's really the same way I felt about Harry Potter 6--not bad, but more like a cog in a machine than a stand-alone book that the author really treasured. Also, it's where I first realized that Dark Tower movies are a straight-up impossibility. Oh, I have no doubt they'll get made. Song of Susannah just convinced me they shouldn't be.

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

I've only read the first three so far, but my ranking is

Drawing of the Three
Gunslinger
The Waste Lands.

I've actually heard quite a people say the third is their least favorite.

[TheOogieBoogieMan]

May 24, 2010 8:08:31 GMT -5 Al said:

I find it interesting that you dislike Wizard and Glass so much, because I feel like I'm doing it a disservice by only placing it fourth.

I feel that way about placing Drawing of the Three in 4th. It really ramps up the series and gives a better taste of what's to come than the Gunslinger.

I wouldn't say I dislike Wizard and Glass - when you get down to it, it has a nice little love story and shows the similarities between Roland's ka-tets - but it's the only time in the series where, as I was reading it, I was tempted to skip to the next book and come back to it. At least Song of Susannah, which I agree is a bridge-book, stays on course with the adventure and does a pretty good job of it.

May 24, 2010 8:08:31 GMT -5 Al said:

Dark Tower VII has a lot of things that I treasure (including the ending), but I have a hard time getting past Dandelo and Patrick, who seemed too arbitrary and convenient to be such huge parts of the climax.

I was willing to accept Patrick-ex-machina after the final twist in Dark Tower VII, because it put the entire journey in perspective. It's not about beating the big-baddie, it's about what you do up to that point. Plus, DTVII showed to me, more than any other book in the series (maybe in his whole repertoire), how well King can do tearjerkers. Jake's death scene, especially Oy saying bye ("I ache") and Roland evoking the names of those lost as he approaches the Dark Tower both caused a manly lump of testosterone to well up in my throat.

I should probably say that I've only read each book in the series once, so my opinions would likely change upon rereading them.

May 24, 2010 13:11:20 GMT -5 BlackCatWhiteCat said:

I've actually heard quite a people say the third is their least favorite.

Cause of the cliffhanger, maybe? Can't think of any other reason.

[PoolMan]

Wow, a topic! A topic! How I've dreamed of an actual topic! I'd go something like....

The Drawing of the Three (#2)
The Gunslinger (#1)
The Dark Tower (#7)
Wizard and Glass (#4)
Wolves of the Calla (#5)
The Waste Lands (#3)
Song of Susannah (#6)

I absolutely agree with the sentiment of Drawing of the Three for getting top spot, simply because at no point during the rest of the series does King manipulate me better. Especially Roland's multiple, dire situations. He loses body parts, including two of those talented fingers. He gets poisoned. He has to deal with a recovering heroin addict AND a mentally unbalanced woman who flits between ineffectual socialite and psychotic killer. He has to deal with multiple worlds and the potential of undoing his sins against Jake. It is an unbelievably tense book, one that I love more than any other in the series.

The Gunslinger itself is also fantastic, in that it's stark contrast against the rest of the series shows how far Roland has to go to redeem himself before he'll actually be worth of the Tower. He flashes back to a time when he kills every man, woman, and child in a town to be sure of his safety, yet as we go forward we see him become a very different person. Plus the introduction of the world that's "moved on", plus the single best opening line to a novel ever rope me in every time.

I like the final act in The Dark Tower, mostly because of the growth of the characters that we see. Roland has finally learned to put something into himself that isn't the Quest, and begins to question why he's so driven to complete it. Plus, I was one of the few that really, really dug the "big loop" at the end - I think it's a fantastic end to the series. But mostly it's about the character growth of Roland. Very well done.

Wizard and Glass grew on me. On my first readthrough, I didn't understand its presence in the series at all. Seemed like a jarring waste of time to me. But the second time I tackled the series, I saw the point. Again, it's about the question of Roland's character, but this time before he chases the man in black, at a point in his life when he had love but had to make the hard choice to give it up to pursue another objective. These are the defining events that harden Roland into the killer of book 1.

Wolves of the Calla is okay to me, but as such a standalone story, it almost doesn't even seem tied into the rest of the series. You could conceivably take WotC out entirely and rewrite some of the scenes into the rest of the story and never miss it. Yes, it introduces Father Callahan and Black Thirteen and all (key elements to be sure), but the whole "build to a stand that we know isn't final" seems underwhelming to me.

The other two books always kind of fall by the wayside for me. I'll read 'em, but the events seem pale compared to the other books. Also, I seriously dislike everything about the Mia storyline (not to mention Mordred, the Littlest Spider Boy).

I may as well mention that I'm slowly collecting the Marvel hardcovers of the Gunslinger Born series. They are exceptionally awesome, and it's really great to have the story not only expanded, but in order.

[Al]

May 26, 2010 18:05:09 GMT -5 PoolMan said:

I may as well mention that I'm slowly collecting the Marvel hardcovers of the Gunslinger Born series. They are exceptionally awesome, and it's really great to have the story not only expanded, but in order.

These have been seriously fantastic. The Fall of Gilead in particular gave me shivers.

[PoolMan]

They've all been good, even when expanding beyond the realms of canon. I'm especially excited at the prospect of seeing the battle of Jericho Hill and the death of Cuthbert.

Do you know if they're going to continue the series on through into the main novel series? (barring Wizard and Glass, of course, which is already done).

[Al]

Yup. The first issue of The Gunslinger came out a week or two ago. I haven't gotten it yet, but I hear it's not a straight-up adaptation of the novel. I don't exactly know where they depart, but Robin Furth and Peter David have done a great job thus far so I trust them to handle it respectfully.

On a different note, I assume you guys have heard that JJ Abrams let the movie rights expire and they've been snapped up by Akiva Goldsman and Ron Howard, who are looking at making a Dark Tower trilogy. Aside from this being a fantastically bad idea, I'm curious what you think would make it into a 9- or 10-hour Dark Tower saga? What do you keep? What gets cut?

[PoolMan]

What gets cut in a 9-10 hour version of the Tower? Almost everything that's not directly about the tet. If it's not Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy versus something directly against them, it's gone. I hate to say it (because I like the character) but they could probably write around Father Callahan, and I would hope beyond hope that they don't put Stephen King in it...